MMOs and game design

Menu

[LOTRO] Farewell to Codemasters – the great migration

So tomorrow is the big move to US servers. We don’t know the final details yet of the process players will have to go through but it probably will involve creating a Turbine account and then associating the old EU one with it. The advice we’ve been given so far in the FAQ is to wait until the official migration has started for more information.

When we have it, I’ll post it up here. Meanwhile, enjoy the bittersweet (but very appropriate) loading screen that Codemasters put up today. I know that on the whole I’ve been happy with the job they’ve done, and hope they didn’t get too screwed over in whatever deal was cut with Turbine.

Can’t say I’m particularly stoked that Turbine are taking over. They’re not even bothering with separate maintenance times or sever clusters in the EU – which, to me at least, sends the message that EU players are being treated just as a moneygrab, not because Turbine particularly cared about CM’s handling or licensing.

besides, CM sold their lifetime subs for less than Turbine is selling a year’s sub. Blech.

I appreciate that we’ll (finally) be able to partake in all the MyLOTRO stuff, but I’m not sure it’s all sun and joy if we just become “those guys” who play on what are, essentially, US realms but from across an ocean.

I’m in the UK, and I have played LotRO on the US servers for some time. The advantages I see to the migration are that Turbine launched the updates before Codemasters, and that CM Points cost more than Turbine Points.

The downside is that with Turbine launching updates after Turbine, occasionally they held them back until bugs were worked out… as we saw with Update 2.